5 Reasons Why Freelancers Do Not Earn What They Deserve

A freelancer is the person who is self-employed and who is not committed to a particular job for long term. An agency or a company often represent these workers and they sell their work to the clients along with their general employees of their company. However this profession has lot of drawbacks and nowadays its slowly losing its popularity as freelancers don’t earn what they deserve. There are numerous reasons behind this fact. Here in this article I have depicted 5 reasons why Freelancers are earning less than what they deserve.

Working for more hours

The Freelancer has to plan out much before doing the assignment, though they are being paid for the project given to them but they also have certain hourly rates which they keep in their mind, so sometimes it happens that the freelancer spends most of his/her time by filling up the forms for quarterly tax and annual forms and so for this reason he cannot prepare a bill for the task he completed of their clients. Many a times marketing task given to the freelancer takes a lot of time and such task is usually not payable which results in less payment for them. Sometimes the freelancer spends much time on proposal but ends up getting nothing in hand which is a total wastage of time for them. Sometimes the projects which are allotted to them require much more information and high knowledge so lots of time is spent in gathering the information for the project.

Poor planning

The next most important reason why the freelancer is not paid what he deserve is his low estimating skills and because of this they lose much more than what they expected. For example, the freelancer estimate that the project which is being given to him requires 2 hours and would fetch him 50$ but actually that project takes 4 hours instead of two hours, so here the freelancer lose much of his time and end up earning less than what he actually deserve to earn.

Neglecting Miscellaneous costs

This is very general and obvious problem associated with the freelancer. Sometimes many freelancers underestimate the amount of effort and cost required by a project. A phone and a computer system with working internet connection is must for a freelancer as he required to connect with his clients to get the project information and also to obtain necessary requirements about the project and to ask if any kind of queries he has anytime. This is just the general cost he has to have it with him, other cost includes expense of electricity. He has to keep these expenses in mind before he set his hourly rates. Moreover, they also don’t have good negotiating skills and due to this reason they are unable to earn enough according to their efforts.

Improper Negotiating skills

The next vital reason why the freelancer don’t earn what they deserve is the bargaining power of the freelancer because in some cases it happens that clients have an upper hand in case of price & scheduling and if the freelancer does not bargain properly than it would result in the buyer ending up settling the project for lower price and the freelancer would be underpaid than what he actually deserve. So, they should bring the effective power of negotiating with their client in order to get better pay rates by their client. They should also have good power of communication to deal with their client.

Being Liberal on late payments

No Time is fixed for the freelancer, many of them receive late payments and many of them are scared of speaking about the money which they owe to their clients, so the late payment effect his timely schedule. As due to this they are not able to pay their timely bill and sometimes they are even charged for late fees or additional expenses for late payment. For instance, in case of phone bill or electricity bill if the bill is not paid on due date penalty has to be paid for making late payment. So ultimately the freelancer has to suffer this because he cannot stand for his own hard work and effort which he has allotted in the project which is being given to him. As a result he is paid less or rather do not earn what he actually deserve. So this all are the reasons behind the less earning of the freelancer than what he deserves.

Conclusion

There are many more reasons why freelancers are not paid what they deserve. The five reasons listed above are the most important, at least according to me. I hope before taking up your next freelancing projects you estimate your earnings, overhead costs and other expense. Let us know how it went.

This is a guest post by Debarshi Ghosh Dastidar. He is a freelance writer and blogger. He writes for many blogs including Inspireyourway a design weblog. When he is not blogging he is tweeting about freebies, giveaways and blogging tips. To get those tweets follow him on Twitter

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About the Author

Debarshi, is an experienced Internet Marketer and self taught web designer working for WebCreationUK, one of leading web design company also known for their expertise in search engine optimisation services.

Leave a Comment:

Freelancing is however a very good technique to earn more and enjoy life more comfortably then job but we need to make our strict schedule to get success because as there is not any type of pressure on us from outsiders so we might take the things lightly which can really do a lot of harm.

Leave a Comment:

Excellent article on why freelancers do not earn much. There is a very big competition in the freelancing market & you need to negotiate a lot to compete with the established one. site like Fiverr is one of the reason why the earnings of even good freelancers in affecting.

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